There are advantages and disadvantages to having my blog off the beaten path. I don’t have a few handy tricks that come exclusively when you’re part of WordPress.org/.net. But danged if I don’t thoroughly enjoy the freedom to install whatever plugin strikes my fancy. I only pay an extra amount for the domain here, and nothing for the hosting (since I already had that.) I have the ability to upgrade the version with a couple of clicks and voilà! She’s done. (Yes, my blog is female. She’s entirely too logical and far too pretty to be male.)
Today I kinda kicked back early. We typically spend Fridays on the run nearly from sunup to sundown (and occasionally beyond.) Today we only made a couple of stops, one of which was to tour the community where we are jonesing to live. (The one from the video a couple of days back.)
Well, were jonesing to live anyway.
I should say, are, but the money situation could make or break us because the rents around here vary hugely according to the time of year. If we’d rented a month or so ago it would’ve been ridiculously cheap, but when we bump it out to mid-July (which is probably what we’ll need to do) we’ll only be looking some $60 a month lower than what we’re paying where we live now, if that.
That’s still a savings per month and it’s still an awesome place, don’t get me wrong. It’s nearly 1-1/2 times the square foot of this place, on top of everything else. But that’s also still a lot more than I wanted to pay, especially by the time you tack on all the deposits, application fees, actual moving costs and so on. There’s no way in HELL I can help move our furniture and G can’t do everything alone. Even if he could, we’re going to have to pay enough deposit and so on for a U-Haul, might as well just hire movers to do the grunt work.
G was practically drooling on our walk-through of the model at the complex. I had already seen the places and knew what they were, but he was gobsmacked. You’re quite literally living in a garden year-round. There are only eight units per building, on two floors, so every apartment is an end unit. That means more windows, dual balconies or decks, and a TON of storage space. The laundry room is HUGE and would also mean we can have both washer AND dryer in the house, where now we can just barely fit our washer. That will also mean a certain amount of savings, not hauling stuff to the laundromat to dry. Plus this place was originally built to be condos so it’s all double-pane windows, ergo lower utility bills. And it would be nice to have a fireplace come wintertime.
Double bonus points because so many conveniences are walking distance from the complex: a grocery store, several restaurants, a chain drugstore, etc. It’s also a heartbeat away from the freeway (far enough not to get any of the noise but less than 5 minutes’ drive unless traffic is really bad.)
So yeah, I still want it if the money can be managed. It’s that little “if” that is the stickler.
I also talked with the finance guy about buying today. I’d kind of hit a mental brick wall on that end, thinking if we couldn’t afford to move into an apartment, buying a house was a royal joke. But the financial wiz pointed out that there are several programs that let you move in with zero down and there’s even a help option to cover the closing costs. It would entail moving into the boonies, which would suck majorly in a lot of respects BUT would on the other hand get us a ridiculously awesome house for a song.
My son just bought a 2K+ foot showcase for$110K in the most likely community, a place called Queen Creek. (Her-Story, if you read this, it’s the same area you and hubby were considering when you drove out here.) Smaller places like we’d be looking at – brand new houses – are going for $65-75K or less. I’d be a fool to dismiss the potential outright even if it did mean a fairly long drive to work. I’m driving 17 miles one way where I live now; if I move to one of our other offices, it would be a comparable haul to work from the vicinity of Queen Creek.
The one bright spot in living in the area (besides being closer to all the kids) would be that there’s a new freeway a hop, skip and a jump away – so getting to work wouldn’t be quite such a challenge, depending on the hours I work.
Don’t recall if I mentioned or not, but we have three offices across the general area and it’s pretty traditional for employees to go from location to location, change shifts, etc. In this business, movement within the company literally means MOVING within the company! So depending on which department I finally move to – and that’s definitely the plan – I’d be moving closer to home if we land in that general direction.
I like the fact that at the very least, we have options – a number of them!